Steen Rasmussen

STEEN RASMUSSEN - Since Professor Steen Rasmussen’s Ph.D in Physics at the Technical University of Denmark in 1985, his scientific activities have mostly focused on pioneering and implementing new approaches, methods, and applications for self-organizing processes in natural and human made systems.

Professor Rasmussen is currently the Director for the Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT http://www.sdu.dk/flint) at University of Southern Denmark (SDU), External Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), USA, Principle Investigator (PI) of the European Union (EC) sponsored Matrix for Chemical IT (MATCHIT) project and Co- PI for the EC sponsored Electronic Chemical Cell (ECCell) project.

Further he was the PI for the upstart of the Initiative for Society, and Policy (ISSP) in Denmark. During his 20 years in New Mexico, USA (1988-2007), he was the Team Leader for the Self-Organizing Systems (SOS) team at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and a Guest Professor at University of Copenhagen (2004-5).

He was PI for the Los Alamos Protocell Assembly (LDRD-DR) project and the Astrobiology program (origins of life) at Los Alamos developing experimental and computational protocells and Cell-Like Entities, with USAF as a co-sponsor. Further, he was the co-director on the European Union sponsored Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution (PACE) project. He was the Chair of the Science and Engineering Leadership Team (SELT) for 2001-2002 in the Earth and Environmental Science (EES) Division at LANL and is currently on the Science Board for the European Center for Living Technology (ECLT) in Venice, Italy, which he is a co-founder of in 2004. He also currently heads the Science Board for ProjectZero, a regional sustainability organization in Sønderborg, Denmark. He co-developed the Transportation Simulation System (TRANSIMS), which is now implemented by the USA Department of Transportation. He co-directed the Urban Security Initiative at LANL, developing an integrated simulation framework for urban systems as well as web-based disaster mitigation tools, which were implemented in the May 2000 Cerro Grande Wildfire where 20.000 people were evacuated.

He was also part of the original Los Alamos team on Critical Infrastructure Protection, to be implemented by the US Department of Homeland Security. Finally, he was one of the founders of the Artificial Life movement in the late 1980s Professor Rasmussen has published more than 80 peer reviewed papers and many internal technical reports, given more than 170 invited presentations outside of home institutions, and he has co-organized eight international and several national conferences. He organized the two first international protocell meetings one at Los Alamos and the Santa Fe Institute (US) and one in Dortmund (Germany) and edited the first book on the topic. Many communications about his work inside and outside of the scientific establishment have appeared on television and in newspapers, periodicals, and books. Since 2000 he has sponsored 14 postdocs (theorists and experimentalists) and 25 graduate and undergraduate students.

He is also actively engaged in the public debate about science, society and policy. Since 2003 Professor Rasmussen has brought in about $34M in research grants (PI: $17.6M and Co-PI: $16.4M) to his host institutions. He has extensive experience in international program development and research leadership and he is currently responsible for the day-to- day activities of about 20 people within FLinT.